An ongoing swine flu outbreak in Mexico has left at least 29 people dead and nearly 1,500 others infected, health officials confirmed on Saturday. Thousands more are also ill as the country faces several types of flu this season.

Since the start of the ongoing winter season, at least 7,069 people have reported suffering from symptoms similar to those of swine flu. Lab tests are still underway and have so far confirmed 1,456 cases of the disease, which is officially known as A/H1N1. According to Mexico's Health Ministry (SSA), at least twenty-nine people have died of swine flu so far this season. While no health emergency has been declared, officials expect the death toll will rise in the coming weeks as Mexico also faces A/H3N2 and B influenza.
The H1N1 influenza virus emerged in the Mexican state of Veracruz in April 2009 and quickly spread around the world, causing the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a global flu pandemic in June 2009. At least 18,000 people have died of the disease since, although the actual number is believed to be far higher. In August 2010, the WHO declared that the swine flu pandemic was over. "In the post-pandemic period, influenza disease activity will have returned to levels normally seen for seasonal influenza," the WHO said at the time. "It is expected that the pandemic virus will behave as a seasonal influenza A virus." - Channel 6 News.
Half a world away, doctors in India are fighting outbreaks of bacterial infections that are resistant to more than 15 types of antibiotics. But closer to home, a similarly scary bug is making the rounds in intensive care and other long-term units of American hospitals.

In at least 37 states,
Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, doctors have identified bacteria,
including E. coli, that produce Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase, or
KPC--an enzyme that makes bacteria resistant to most known treatments. It's much more prevalent in America than bacteria that produce NDM-1, the enzyme that has Indian doctors "hell scared," and, according to Alexander Kallen, a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, the final outcome isn't much different: superbacteria that are hard to kill. "It's got a slightly different structure than [NDM-1]," he says of KPC. "But the bottom line is they're two different ways to produce bacteria that are resistant to a wide range of antibiotics."
[Hospital Rooms Crawling With Drug-Resistant Germs.]
That's bad news for infected
patients--the mortality rate for patients infected with KPC-producing
bacteria has been estimated to be as high as 50 percent. Doctors are
advised to do their best to keep the bacteria from spreading, which
explains why the problem is most prevalent in hospitals and other
close-quarter medical units. Infected patients are often isolated. KPC has been seen in a wide
range of bacteria, including E. coli, Salmonella, and K. pneumonia,
which often affects hospitalized patients. These superbugs are resistant
to nearly every weapon doctors can throw at them, including carbapenems,
a class of antibiotic that the CDC calls the "last line of defense"
against infections that are resistant to other types of antibiotics.
There are a couple antibiotics that have been shown to kill these
superbugs, but often at great risk to patients. In fact, the FDA has
associated the use of these effective antibiotics with an "increased risk of death" in patients with pneumonia.
That leaves many doctors
scratching their heads. KPC-bacteria often grow on medical equipment
such as catheters and ventilators, so doctors can sometimes remove that
equipment or perform surgery to try to eliminate the infection from a
patient's body. [Are Kids Brown-Bagging Bacteria?] CDC researchers, including
Kallen, say that hospitals who haven't been vigilant about isolating
patients with KPC-producing bacteria may have missed their chance.
According to a paper co-authored by Kallen released last year, "failure
to recognize CRE infections when they first occur in a facility has
resulted in a missed opportunity to intervene before these organisms are
transmitted more widely." The good news is that, at
least for now, KPC-producing bacteria generally only infects people who
already have compromised immune systems. "It can move into the wider
community," says Kallen, "but we haven't seen much of that yet." -
Yahoo.
Meanwhile, India has cleared the proposal to roll out a new diagnostic test genexpert across 18 sites that will test and confirm MDR TB within 120 minutes.
About 99,000 Indians
suffering from TB are becoming drug-resistant every year. However, the
diagnostic tools available take two days to about four months to confirm
a single drug-resistant case during which time the air-borne disease
spreads to others. The new test aims to increase diagnosis of the deadly
disease by at least seven-fold. The sites, where the new test
is being introduced includes Rohtak (Haryana), Dharavi (Mumbai),
Amravati (Maharashtra), Udaipur and Jodhpur (Rajasthan), Bilaspur
(Chhattisgarh), Malkangiri (Odisha), Tehri (Uttarakhand), South 24
Parganas (West Bengal), Sangam Vihar (Delhi), Indore (Madhya Pradesh)
and two sites each in Vijayanagaram (Andhra Pradesh), Kamrup (Assam) and
Ranchi (Jharkhand). Treating MDR-TB patients is expensive.
While treating a TB patient costs India Rs 600 over six to eight months,
the expense for every MDR-TB patient is about Rs 1.5 lakh during 24-28
months' period. Union health ministry officials told TOI that the
cartridges for genexpert and the machine are being provided to India by
the World Health Organization for free for the next two years. "At present, a Line Probe Assay test available across 18 sites takes
two days to diagnose a single MDR sample, while a liquid culture test
and the solid culture test takes two months and four months,
respectively. Time is crucial as far as diagnosing TB is concerned. A
single MDR TB patient can spread the disease to 15 people every year, if
left untreated," said a ministry official. About 7,000 MDR TB
patients are on treatment in India - of which 3,500 were put on
treatment last year. Around 36 labs can test MDR samples. The
feasibility of using genexpert will be studied over the next two years. "However, we will get initial results within the next six months.
Protocol for its use has been approved and the machines have been
ordered. There is no question of the reliability of the genexpert test.
We are however trying to analyze at the level in which it should be
positioned. The 18 sites have been chosen carefully. Some have high
burden of HIV/TB infection, while in Rajasthan it will look at how it
performs in the desert setting," a ministry official said. India
documents 1.9 million TB cases every year.
The Revised National
TB Control Programme (RNTCP) estimates that around 3% of all new cases
and 12%-17% among retreatment cases are MDR. India's TB control
division has asked the Union health ministry to declare it a
"notifiable disease" across the country. If approved, all private
doctors, caregivers and clinics will have to report every case of the
air-borne disease to the government. A ministry note says a very large
number of TB patients in India are diagnosed but are not referred to or
notified to the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP). Plague, polio, H5N1 (bird flu) and H1N1 (swine flu) - all highly infectious diseases - figure in the list.
India's 12th five-year Plan for TB control says, "All diagnosed TB
cases will be notified irrespective of their treatment or registration
status." In 2010 alone, an estimated 2.3 million TB cases occurred, and
360,000 people died of TB - about 1,000 fatalities per day. Nearly one
in six deaths among adults, aged between 15 and 49, are due to TB. - Times of India.